There are a lot of management handbooks and other useful material that try to explain how this software engineering management thing should work best. Most of them provide useful information and reflect the experience of hundreds of successful managers or management consultants.

Michael Lopp’s Managing humans is somewhat different. It takes an approach that certainly addresses managers or wannabe managers, but it reads very nicely as well for people that--in their careers in whatever position--have something to do with the software industry. I believe it is entertaining even for people living totally outside the software world.

Nevertheless, it provides very deep insight into the life of (good) software engineering managers. In 52 chapters, Lopp addresses virtually all flavors of a software manager’s often-hard life. When reading through, one might observe that the author presents very obvious things: make sure you keep communication alive; insist on regular one-to-ones with team members; do everything to keep meetings efficient; make sure that you talk in a language your coworkers understand; and so on. The surprise is that this is done in a really humorous way (Lopp does not exaggerate when calling his book “biting and humorous tales of a software engineering manager”). And more importantly, he discusses really tricky things like how to communicate with totally disconnected people, whose thinking is very different from your own; how to manage the nerds who do not want to be managed at all; how to deal with “floor news”; and how to understand who the “stables” and “volatiles” are on your team and how to keep them both motivated and productive at the same time.

Besides all these topics that sound somehow known to any software engineering manager, there is something new: how the information is presented, and the always-visible deep experience of the author himself.

And there are some very practical tips like how to use silence. In addition, Lopp also discusses the challenges and opportunities of “submarine projects”--calling them “skunk works projects” in the chapter “Subtlety, Subterfuge and Silence.”

Some very useful management instruments are presented, like the Rands test to understand if you have a general problem on your team, or his “meeting bail tips”: how to understand who sits in a meeting, what a meeting is about anyway, and how to get to at least something in the end. Again, this is given as a really humorous tale.

Certainly, the software engineering industry is somehow special: nerds; volatility; always a bit of research and exploration possible; and very special personalities involved. However, I am pretty sure that the basic principles behind Lopp’s tales apply to more “classical” industries and enterprises as well.

I can very warmly recommend this book to anyone who already works in a software engineering management position--whatever level--or who thinks about a career in this direction. It will be entertaining for software engineers as well, at least for understanding how these management beings think and why they might do what they are doing. And the book will be useful for any engineering manager, no matter what domain they are at home in. Finally, it will be a fun read for anyone who has just some vague understanding of this management thing.

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